Monday, October 18, 2010

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes

I'm pleased and relieved that following an exchange of a few emails, our paper is now out of the bin, at least for the time being. It turned out that a major part of the criticism was based on a misunderstanding (and to be fair, even though I think most of the intended audience will have understood correctly, we could have explained it more fully for a general readership, and will certainly do so in the revised version). Phew!

Well, it's not published, or even accepted, so no cake yet...but I am optimistic. We don't really do cake, it might be seen as boastful to celebrate openly :-)

Chris, I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you. No, actually we just explained why we thought the main criticisms (that the ed had cited in his decision) were either minor or mistaken, and it seems that we have convinced him, at least adequately to justify a proper revision + reply. The exact details are pretty mundane. It's a thankless task dealing with irate authors so I'm grateful to him for listening to us.

James --- I'm completely muddled again. Is this the paper with the unexpected 4th reviewer?

And I must say that the journals you aim for give much more control to the editors than those I'm familiar with. For example, a fixed number of reviewers, selected by the responsible editor, is required; more frequently now the author(s) of a submission can even suggest, or are evn required to suggest, submit a list (of fixed length) of prospective reviewers and sometimes even those requested not to be reviewers.

Similarly for comment policy. No comments appear with the paper; commenters (including the general public) have 6 months to submit a comment (up to a maximum length); the author(s) then write a response (of a longer fixed length per comment) and the comments and responses are all subsequently published together. No further comments on the paper or on the comments or the reply are allowed. Attempts to do that restart by submitting a paper anew.

No cake? How about something traditionally Japanese and thus modest by definition, let's say getting one of those statues and painting its eyes in? Afterwards you could put it in the lobby with a suitable inscription memorializing the occasion.

David, yes this is that paper. We did get to suggest reviewers but the ed is still the one with the overall control, which is IMO entirely appropriate. I'd not be happy with a system where the ed was not able to make his own choices, as it would be too easy to game the system with tame reviewers.

With a proper revision + reply requested, I think I can guess that will get priority over investigating my suggestion (instead of number of models nearer than MMM, adjust test stringency to make number of models passing test larger).

I am presuming you haven't yet had time to investigate whether changing test stringency yields constent results and, if so, whether the results might be more robust from using a combination of a few different test stringency levels.

About the time that Americans became tired of Georgie III, some wrote, in part, all men, male and female.

The word man has origins in the Germanic languages, Angles and Saxons and all that. The word simply means one, a person. Examples: Zimmermann, one with a hammer; a carpenter; Schiffmann, one with a ship; Hausmann, one with a house (from which our husband stems); Womann, one with a womb, very important a long time ago.

> "The word man has origins in the Germanic languages, Angles and Saxons and all that. ..."

That is irrelevant. It was "he" that was used not "man". Additionally, wittering about the origin of the word "man" is waste of electrons. Apparently, it is these days generally considered by most people to refer to the male of the species, and we must act accordingly. That's what my feminist friends told me. They get quite cross when I call them men.

One generally who an editor is, but it is funny how often people assume their reviewers are men. They should consider that it is so much easier for women to exhibit supposedly masculine characteristics (like bull-headed stupidity :-) ) from behind the veil of secrecy.

Based on a tip at Hot Topic, I acquired a copy of Mahlstein & Knutti (2010), a paper that appears to have all sorts of interesting implications, although as an amateur I of course lack the complete context. It makes a particular case for knocking out the low end of Arctic sensitivity while heavily hinting that the same should be true globally, and on the way to making it emasculates certain models (note my clever selection of a term entirely unsuitable for unisexing). Worth a post?

"Ocean heat transport as a cause for model uncertainty in projected Arctic warming

"The Arctic climate is governed by complex interactions and feedback mechanisms between the atmosphere, the ocean and solar radiation. One of its characteristic features, the Arctic sea ice, is very vulnerable to anthropogenically caused warming. Production and melting of sea ice is influenced by several physical processes. In this study we show that the northward ocean heat transport is an important factor in the simulation of the sea ice extent in the current general circulation models. Those models which transport more energy to the Arctic show a stronger future warming, in the Arctic as well as globally. Larger heat transport to the Arctic, in particular in the Barents Sea, reduces the sea ice cover in this area. More radiation is then absorbed during summer months and is radiated back to the atmosphere in winter months. This process leads to an increase in the surface temperature and therefore to a stronger polar amplification. The models which show a larger global warming agree better with the observed sea ice extent in the Arctic. In general, these models also have a higher spatial resolution.

"These results suggest that higher resolution and greater complexity are beneficial in simulating the processes relevant in the Arctic, and that future warming in the high northern latitudes is likely to be near the upper range of model projections, consistant with recent evidence that many climate models underestimate Arctic sea ice decline."

I'd seen the title and it's in my google reader waiting for me to get around to it...that abstract sounds too qualitative for them to be claiming strong implications about climate sensitivity though. Certainly the CMIP3 models have a huge range of ocean circulation (and therefore heat transport) and some are pretty bad...

Well, the claim is pretty strong, although interestingly after noting up front an excellent correlation between Arctic sens and global sens they said nothing else about it. Knutti does seem to be on a bit of a campaign.